Middle Earth - Developer Diary

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Turbine Senior Producer Tim Holman states the team is meticulously refining the Tolkien-inspired online world.

By IGN Staff

Appearing today, this developer diary addresses the game's absence from this year's E3 and the extension of its projected launch date, which is now 2005. In this snippet, he begins to describe how the extra time is being utilized:

First, we're not going to use the extension time to flood the game with entirely new material. No new features, no new races, no new classes, no new regions. So just what the heck are we going to be doing with this time?

We set out to make the best game possible, but as the game was coming together we weren't satisfied that every aspect of MEO was as good as it could be. Each time we refined a quest, changed a monster's behavior, or polished the look and feel of a certain area, the game got that much better. We wanted to have time to go through the entire game multiple times to do this sort of polish, to make Middle-Earth&153; Online not just acceptably good, but a truly shining example of what fantasy MMPs could be.

The persistent state game based on the popular literary trilogy is set to feature purchasable housing, a variety of tradeskills and private, instanced environments. For more information, you can check out the FAQ on the official site. - Valandil